DALLAS — New research from The Freeman Company (TFC), titled The Belief Gap™, explores the channels marketers are turning to in order to help build authority and customer loyalty.
The “Belief Gap” is defined as the gap between a customer knowing a brand exists and one who believes in a brand enough to choose, defend and return to it.
Seventy-two percent of marketing professionals in the study say they perceive a gap between brand awareness and genuine brand belief among their own customers, and 74% of those marketers say they are extremely or very concerned about that gap.
When asked about the marketing channels they believe are helpful in closing the Belief Gap, marketers said that experiential marketing was the most effective channel for building brand belief. Experiential marketing came out on top of content marketing, digital advertising, social media, PR and even word of mouth.
According to the study, which was conducted independently by Harris Poll and designed by TFC, 93% of respondents said events have a positive impact on brand discovery, and 90% said events build brand credibility and authority.
It makes sense then that 73% of the marketers surveyed in the study said they were planning to increase their event spending in the next 12 months.
“The Belief Gap is real, it’s measurable and it’s costing brands more than most of them realize. Awareness without belief is just noise. It doesn’t drive purchase decisions, it doesn’t build loyalty and it doesn’t survive competitive pressure,” stated Mickey Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer at TFC. “What this research makes clear is that live experience closes that gap in a way no campaign can replicate and no algorithm can manufacture. That’s not a channel strategy. That’s a business imperative.”
Events Positioned as a Search Strategy
So where does AI come into play?
The research found that 97% of marketing professionals said that events and event-related content are important for brand visibility and inclusion in AI-generated answers. Credible, third-party, human-generated content is favored by LLMs, according to the research, including content such as speaker coverage, session recaps, live testimonials and real-time social proof.
“The broader point from our research is that events create new insights,” Wilson said. “AI can help amplify and scale that knowledge, but the authority still comes from the human expertise and live interactions that only events can produce.”
Despite this though, only 15% of those surveyed report using a formal KPI program to measure the impact events have on LLM visibility.
“The value of event content comes from the fact that it captures firsthand expertise, real conversations, audience questions and perspectives that didn’t exist before the event. Those are original signals that can’t be manufactured through AI alone,” said Wilson. “AI can absolutely help organizers transcribe sessions, create summaries and distribute content more efficiently. In fact, those capabilities can make valuable event insights more accessible and discoverable.
“The risk is not using AI. The risk is relying on AI to generate generic content that could have been written without anyone ever attending the event. If the content lacks unique perspective or simply restates what’s already available online, it becomes less differentiated regardless of how it was created.”
Building on Existing Research’s Findings
The Belief Gap study’s finding that marketers find experiential marketing and events to be a driver in building brand belief and trust solidifies research from earlier Freeman Trends reports and CEIR studies: As AI and other digital channels advance, the need for in-person, hands-on experiences with products and solutions will be even more important for companies to build trust.
Related. New Freeman Trends Report Reveals a Missing Value Proposition Around Attendee Objectives
According to TFC’s The Belief Gap study, 45% of marketers say the absence of in-person or experiential touchpoints is one of the primary drivers of the Belief Gap, emphasizing the importance of events as a channel to build trust and loyalty among customers.
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